Stuart Mill

A former gold rush town, Stuart Mill is now the gateway to the St Arnuad Range National Park.  The National Park flourishes with native flora and fauna and gold seekers are still finding gold today in the old diggings.  Stuart Mill is a quaint little town with an old English village aspect featuring some old relics from gold mining days and is looked upon as a little oasis because of the fertile valley in which it lies, surrounded by Strathfillian Creek and Teddington Reservoirs.

History

First known as Sanderson's Diggings in 1861, then Albert Town, the settlement on Strathfillan Creek on Joseph Sanderson's Mount Teddington run was renamed Stuart Mill about April 1863, probably in honour of the British philosopher and economist John Stuart Mill.

The township was gazetted in 1865 and at the first land sale that year there were four buyers.  One was James Malcolm, manager of the Greenoch mine, who in 1868 contracted a builder to erect the Commercial Hotel and store, a brick building that gave 'an air of permanency to the town.  Stuart Mill became a busy bustling town with a population of almost one thousand people.  It was the scene of great commercial and industrial activity, and was very prosperous.  Due to closures of the Greenoch mine, a diversion in the railway route outside Stuart Mill and James Malcolm's flour mill being moved to St Arnuad, the population steadily declined over the decades leaving Stuart Mill without hotels, butchers or a local store.

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